GLENN KENNY'S REVIEW (posted 4/4/03)

Finnish director Aki Kaurismäki's latest film begins on a pretty grim note; our hero, big, stolid-seeming, square-headed Markku Peltola, gets off a train and is almost immediately beaten and robbed and left for dead. In the hospital, head completely bandaged, he gets up, manually resets his nose, and goes back out into the world, without any memory of who he is or where he came from. Given the black humor of other Kaurismäki films like the phenomenally deadpan The Match Factory Girl, one might expect The Man Without a Past to continue unfolding in a dour vein, but the movie is in fact a colorful and droll fable that's as sweet-natured as it is spectacularly funny. Settling in a very motley quasi trailer park (the domiciles are truck-sized shipping containers ) presided over by a peculiar "landlord" who keeps his "tenants" in line by boasting of the fierceness of his dog, Peltola's M begins savoring the hard-earned joys of life on the margins of society, winning the affections of his neighbors as well as of a Salvation Army worker (Kati Outinen) whose secret vice is listening to very old rock 'n' roll on a tinny transistor radio before going to sleep at night.

Every one of the eccentric touches Kaurismäki gives his characters pays off big time in this lovely film, and all of the performers — including Kaurismäki's own dog, Tähti, as the slightly-less-than-vicious canine Hannibal — embody their roles with soulful conviction. As dry as its sense of humor can be, Kaurismäki's dialogue abounds with inertly delivered non sequiturs and almost every scene has at least one subtly quizzical reaction shot, many of which had me in stitches — this movie's embrace of humanity is very warm indeed.

—Glenn Kenny